LINGUIST List 11.678

Sun Mar 26 2000

Qs: "S(h)trudel", Gold's Theorem for Undergrads

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Dear Linguist members,
Does anyone know if "shtrudel" / "strudel" is used in the Yiddish-
speaking community or in modern Hebrew to refer to the at-sign
()?
Thank you for your help,
Monika
monika.bruendlanglistik.uni-muenchen.de

Can anyone suggest a treatment of Gold's theorem (showing that a context free
grammar is in principle unlearnable from positive evidence only) that would be
suitable for a general undergraduate audience? The course I want to use it on
covers Automata Theory, so a bit of the technical development would be
desirable, but on the other hand it should assume minimal linguistic
sophistication.
I'm hoping for something on the level of a Scientific American article, rather
than something that reads like primary literature. (I have been pointed to
some nice expositions, including one by Pinker, but they are too dense for
this audience).
I would appreciate any references or any pointers to likely repositories of
this kind of information.
Thanks,
Alexis Dimitriadis